My daughter's marionette puppet show

Once upon a time, the descriptive line of my blog read, "Songs, stories and puppet shows." I haven't done a puppet show in a long time. However, I am posting a 4:46 minute video of my 5 1/2 year old daughter's marionette puppet show she presented Sunday morning. It may be of interest only to close family members and early childhood educators (especially Waldorf-trained teachers) but who knows-- the rest of you might take away something worthwhile that I didn't anticipate. Here is the video:



The marionette itself is made of silk scarves and wool felt, with two strings arranged as long loops. This puppet is a simple version of the kinds used in Lucia's Waldorf kindergarten, and she is lucky enough to have a teacher who specializes in marionettes. The puppet shows I have watched have had a narrator/sound person separate from the puppeteer. The puppeteer usually doesn't wear a fancy hat-- that is Lucia's addition, thanks to her introduction to the Red Hat Society gathering we saw at Dave's Restaurant* in Milton, Washington before my second gig last Saturday.

After the little preamble, Lucia begins her show with, "From the land of the stars, from the land of the sun, from the land of the moon, here to where we now are." She ends with "Stars, moon and sun, our story is done." I am pretty sure that the story opening and closing with accompanying motions plus what we're calling the "Waldorf mood song" were picked up from her teacher. She draws from other elements of stories and songs picked up along the way. The section about being an orphan comes from the book Owliver by Robert Krauss, where the main character, a little owl, pretends to have no parents, only to be cheerfully scolded by his mother and father, who are told that he is only acting.The "shooting star" theme comes from one of the many stories I told her about how she came to be Bede's and my child.** (She knows her own hospital birth story as we've told it to her, but she also likes to hear the imaginative versions.) The song that plays over the credits is one that she made up for the video.

If you are interested in reading about this kind of puppetry with young children, take a look at the resources list on Suzanne Down's website, Juniper Tree Puppets. As someone who has been interested in storytelling with puppets from an early age, I hope to take a workshop with her someday.

*I ordered the bacon waffle in Adrienne's honor.

**A man and a woman wanted a child. As they looked up into the sky, they saw the first star of the evening., they said, "Oh, how we wish we had a child!" The star heard their wish, and said, "I've been a star for a very long time. I want to be a child now." The star began to travel through the heavens. As the star passed throug the solar system and flew past the planets, it got smaller and smaller until it landed in a strawberry patch on earth. As it rested among the strawberries, it changed into a child with brown hair, brown eyes and rosy cheeks. The man and the woman walked by the strawberry patch and said, "Look--it's our child!" [Lucia follows up with, "I was that child!"]

Oregon Shadow Theatre presents "Thumbelina"

"Flower Child Number Nine"

On Tuesday, I took Lucia and my mother to see Oregon Shadow Theatre perform their sixties musical shadow puppet production of Thumbelina at one of our library branches. Mick Doherty was the musician and DJ named "Hans" who provided narration and voices while Deb Chase worked the puppets and also provided voices for Hans Christian Andersen's tale of a tiny "flower child" and her travels through the world. Bugs sang "Food Chain" to the tune of "Chain Gang," Buford the frog sang, "I ain't nothin' but a bull-frog..." and during an insect beauty pageant, a caterpillar sang, "These boots, boots, boots, boots, boots, boots, boots are made for walkin'." The dialogue abounded with coy references to sixties songs, too. The mole in the story is named Darkness just so that the mouse (named Strawberry Fields) can say, "Hello, Darkness, my old friend." I'll admit it: the humor was right up my alley.


Thumbelina with the Sun King

Lucia thoroughly enjoyed the show, and was riveted from beginning to end. When she said she wanted to sit up in front with the other children, I was a little concerned that she would try to interrupt the program with her incessant questions, but those worries were unfounded. I had waited for years to take her to an Oregon Shadow Theatre program, as the program is geared for children ages four and up. Since the Oregon Shadow Theatre usually performs in a darkened room (which wasn't an option here), the age guidelines are particularly important. However, there were plenty of children under four, plus quite a few babies. The babies cried, the toddlers fussed, and I mentally gave gold stars to Doherty and Chase for plowing through all the distractions to give a stellar performance.

If you have a chance to see Oregon Shadow Theare in the future, do so! I got to see Pecos Bill as a children's librarian before I had a baby, and always intended to take my husband to subsequent productions. Now that Lucia has reached the age where a wider variety of performances are appropriate for her, we're going to be attending many more shows.

Mid-Production

I had hoped to have a completed project to present today. While I'm done with principal photography, there is a lot of editing work still to do. This has been the most difficult project to date: we've run over budget, two of the main actors threatened to walk off the set after the goat got into the costume-bin, and initial test audiences have complained that there's not enough violence or humor in the main action sequences. One early reviewer said, "It's quite possible that "One Eye, Two Eyes, Three Eyes" will be the film-strip version of Terry Gilliam's The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. Is this really a House of Glee production? Try 'house of glum.'"

Brutal!

I may need to return to light-hearted comedy and leave the serious film-making to Wim Wenders.

Puppet-Show Pre-production notes

The newest puppet-show from the House of Glee is in pre-production state. It's based on the Grimms' fairy tale, "One Eye, Two-Eyes, Three-Eyes." Expect its official release next Tuesday, December 26, on Boxing Day. Boxing Day is also the Feast of St. Stephen, so it's totally appropriate for you to sing "Good King Wenceslas". To fund this production, I'm going to ask for your help. In lieu of money, I want words. Please place one of your favorite words in the comments section. Fifty-cent words are quite welcome, but if you feel so inspired, one or two 10 dollar words will really put us into the black. Maybe we'll even have a special effect or two!

So far, we have a good showing. Here are the offerings for the Word Fund:

incandescence
meretricious
gobsmacked
shenanigans
"hilarity ensues"
bumpkin
marauding
gopher (plenty of options here)
nacreous
quibble
sartorial
obnubilate
hoarfrost
ineffable

Keep them coming, please.

I'd Say "Yes" to Freshly-Baked Cookies

This headline caught my attention today, and it was too good to pass up:

San Francisco says "No" to cookie aroma at bus stops

"What was billed as a pleasing alternative to exhaust fumes at San Francisco bus stops ended after officials Tuesday ordered the removal of advertisements that gave off the scent of baked cookies.

The fragrant billboards, posted at five bus shelters on Monday in an effort by dairy producers to make passengers thirsty for milk, had to come down because the shelters' maintenance contractor had not informed San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency officials, said an agency spokeswoman."

And now, back to our regularly scheduled theme-blog. Don't think I've forgotten the puppet-show. Please, keep those ideas coming! I hope to have a basic outline by the weekend, and then give you a date for the grand unveiling. The alternative is to have a Boxing Day Grudge Match rematch a la Brad the Gorilla, but you want something with plot, don't you?

Puppet Show Wishlist

It's been ages since I've cobbled together a puppet show for the blog. In preparation for my next production, I am open to input. Please write your puppet-show wishes in the comments section. I'll see what I come up with after reading the results. Take a look at a couple of previous puppet shows, if you need a jump-start for ideas. I know I do.

Puppet Show: Boxing Day Grudge Match

I'm posting this link to a silly puppet-show courtesy of Brad the Gorilla.

Compendium of Nastiness

Most nights, I have to limit my puppet-show attendance to fingerplays in my living room. Yesterday evening, I left my neighborhood home to attend a puppet-show in someone else's neighborhood home. The twelve audience members nibbled on chocolate cookies and sipped champagne before we were led downstairs into the dark recesses of The Womb Theatre to see a gothic melodramatic puppet-show called The Compendium of Nastiness. For an hour, we cringed and shuddered over the nefarious deeds of the evil Uncle Osmond as he terrorized his niece, the innocent Angela. Ki Gottberg of Seattle University wrote the play, and Elizabeth Kenny acted out all of the parts of the characters including an ambitious turn as Percy, the heroine's hobo romantic interest. (Percy attempts to disguise himself as a monk but inevitably betrays his true nature as Elizabeth Kenny's thumb.)

Ki Gottberg


Elizabeth Kenny





Are you intrigued yet? If so, read more, or better yet, attend the puppet-show. Show dates have been extended into January 2006.

And now, I have grand ambitions once more to stage my own puppet show. Attack of the Combs was just the beginning. Somehow, I need to figure out how to fit fourteen audience members into my home. Then, I will have to think about lighting and sound. I'm sure I'll need to make a poster or two. Sometime before actual opening night, I will figure out an actual story for the audience. (That is exactly how I used to plan my puppet-shows, as my parents can attest. Unfortunately, I rarely made it past the poster-making stage. Early on, my mother informed me that "dress rehearsal" meant doing an actual run-through of the show, not simply deciding what costumes the puppets would wear.)

Attack of the Combs: a puppet play

Once, in the not too distant past, a group of good friends gathered at the house of two hippos. The friends thought they would spend a pleasant afternoon in each other's company. If only they had known that someone (or something) had cruel designs to upset their revelry. The story began on a sunny afternoon:

Attack of the Combs

Puppet show teaser:

Here is the teaser poster for a harrowing theatre production filled with treachery, deceit, and a few shameless allusions to Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. I will not give away important plot details, but as I promised Darth Phil and Galatea,there will be two potamuses and a Sith Lord.

Opening day for the puppet show will be Monday, August 15, 2005.

Originally posted on Saturday, August 13, 2005.

1000th visitor(s): Galatea and Darth Phil

Congratulations to Galatea and Darth Phil, who both claim the honor of being the 1000th visitor to this storytelling blog. It is fitting that they both won the prize, as they were my first readers.

Galatea and Darth Phil win a puppet show! (Cue music.) I'm giving myself a week to produce it, so please stay tuned. While I'm working on it, take a look at this puppet show I produced two years ago:

"Jack and the Robbers"



Please click on the "slideshow" option. By the way, some of you may know "Jack and the Robbers" as a variation of "The Bremen Town Musicians." If you're interested at all in the different variations, follow the links.

7/24/05
Hey all,
If you are the 1000th visitor, will you be so kind as to send me a note? Thanks, A. the G.